Usually, Sebastian Ordoñez is a race-car driver only when he's pushing toy cars across his bedroom floor. The 8-year-old will sputter engine noises between his lips as he maneuvers imaginary Formula One racetracks all over the globe. "In like Brazil, Australia, lots of places," he says. He'll be a star...
Joe McCarthy, listen up: To Bob Norman: You are not an American; please leave this country. Learn your facts first, whether you are a liberal, a Democrat, or a Republican. Being an American is an honor, and you should have none of that. Go to another country and live... please!...
The long arm of the law has never much cared for raves, so it's no surprise that Electric Skychurch founder James Lumb was turned down for recent jury duty. "I didn't have to go much further than say 'I'm a rave musician' before they said, 'You're out of here,'" recounts...
Thursday, March 20 It's about that time of year. Spring is in the air. Makes you want to get fancy and drink some wine, right? "Wines from Around the World" is the theme for the eighth-annual Las Olas Wine and Food Festival. In addition to sampling a fine selection of...
Thursday, March 13 A century ago, the National Wildlife Refuge System got its start when Teddy Roosevelt, one of our nation's foremost environmental presidents, began setting wilderness aside to ensure that future generations would always have unspoiled areas to enjoy. On March 14, 1903, he handed down an order to...
In a hurry? Me too, so I'll get to the point. This is a review of Floyd Collins, an innovative musical that's got a week or two left in its run at Actors Playhouse in Coral Gables. The story is based on a real incident in the 1920s, when a...
On a sunny Saturday morning in April, Barbara Rourke gazes toward the sea out her balcony windows. Her fourth-floor condominium on Ocean Boulevard in Pompano Beach offers a splendid view, although it's hard to tell whether she enjoys the seascape. She's a gray-haired wisp of a woman who spends her...
Tim Smith is a short, compact man with a quick boyish smile and the watchful, hungry look of a salesman prowling the front of a car lot. On Election Day last week, he arrived at his neighborhood polling place, the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, promptly at 8:30 in the...
Phish is back -- a new album, a new tour, the whole kit and caboodle. And not a moment too soon: Without Phish, the nomadic throng of folks with a jones for drawn-out jams has been forced to migrate toward lesser musicians who headline gigs in Bumblefuck, Maine. To wit,...
Boston's lone hipster credential remains Kurt Cobain's claim that he pilfered the signature riff from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" off the opening salvo of "More Than a Feeling." In a cruel twist of fate, Nirvana is long gone, but Boston trudges on. Founding guitarist and studio geek Tom Scholz remains...
Having ragged on Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art (MoA) a few times recently, I figured it was only fair to check in again to see how things have been going after a series of major staff changes and budget woes. The news is both good and bad. First, the bad...
With all the Latin immigration to South Florida over the decades, many times we forget our dear neighbors to the north. Canada! Yes, Canada. There's the barren wilderness in the Northwest Territories, the snow-capped peaks of the Yukon, and a massive percentage of its population planted just north of the...
Where can one find the answers to such diverse questions as: In what body part can you find the tarsal bones? How many wives has Mick Jagger had (so far)? And from what musical does the song "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" come? Not Jeopardy!, but at the Frog &...
It's high noon in the historic district of Delray Beach. Two members of the Yoko Theory, Nathan Farnham and Henri Lemaire, haven't been awake for long, so they're a little punchy. But after a brief exchange about wearing panties on-stage and whether New Times can print the word fuck, the...
There's a battlefield face-off approaching on the retail warfront, with South Florida's put-upon small record stores providing a longevity litmus test. That's why a recent rumor struck so ominously -- that revered outlet Blue Note Records in North Miami Beach might be shuttering its rock room. "No, no, no," insists...
Along Dixie Highway, just west of Young Circle Park, an innocuous strip mall with the usual strip-mall businesses sits quietly at the side of the road. V.I.P Hair Salon. Interactive Solutions Inc. -- for all your signs, marketing, and web design needs. Stamped Concrete, featuring one-way concrete delivery. As in...
The fifth album by country singer Faith Hill opens with a loud crash of drums, a throbbing electric bass, and a screeching electric guitar. The song is called "Free," and it's about liberating oneself from the chains of the past. The point is obvious: Hill wants to shed her Nashville...
With 65 features in this year's Miami International Film Festival, as well as shorts and documentaries, you'd deserve a medal if you caught them all. Festival Director Nicole Guillemet promised to tilt heavily toward Spanish-language or Latin-themed productions, and she has delivered. Spain tops the contributors' list, but there are...
Some plays don't just offer food for thought; they serve up fresh ideas, then eat them raw. One such carnivore is Nicky Silver's The Food Chain, now on display in a tasty production at the Mosaic Theatre in Plantation. Silver's scabrous wit slices and dices a number of human foibles,...
The last half of 2000 was a bittersweet purgatory for "Big" Chad Neptune. The year-in-the-making full-length debut, The Moon Is Down, of his band, Further Seems Forever, was finally completed. To celebrate, the Pompano Beach outfit took a month-long jaunt through the Midwest and Southeast to preview the material. But...
Never regarded as a musical nexus of great import, South Florida has no definitive genre to call its own, save perhaps Miami Bass. But individual records have made an impact, or died trying. Not all make for great listening, but each one helped delineate our crazy combination of cultures --...
Last year, the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University contacted more than 200 art critics across the country, inviting them to participate in The Visual Art Critic: A Survey of Art Critics at General-Interest News Publications in America. About 75 percent of those responded. I was one of them...
